Re: -i? -orum? ACK!

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

>  A species name ends in -i when it is named after a male person, or 
> perhaps if
> you wish to honor a company (which are assumed to be of masculine gender 
> for
> purposes of taxonomy).

Companies? Masculine???

> A name may also end in -ii, and there's no real problem
> with this, since it's usually done through a process of latinization of 
> the
> honored's name before adding the final -i, so that Linné (properly, 
> Linnaeus)
> would be stemmed as linnaei-, then add -i for *linnaeii*.

Outright wrong in this case. The stem of Linnaeus is Linnaeo-, therefore the 
genitive is Linnaei. This can become a specific epithet (in lower case, of 
course).

> Some also tend to
> change the final vowel of a name into an -i- then add -i, as in 
> *conybearii*.

Back in those times people often preferred to Latinize names before giving 
them a Latin genitive. So Mr Conybeare became Conybearius; the i is just 
there because it sounds better (...well, marginally...). The stem of this 
construct is then Conybeario-, and the genitive Conybearii.

>  A species can also end in -ianus as genitive forms of their names, or of
> companies, or of regions. Names like *copeanus*, *fraasianus*, or 
> *zhaoianus*.

This is not a genitive. It turns nouns into adjectives. For this purpose it 
has been imported into English: Australian, Floridian...

>  Prior to 2000, the ICZN mandated change of all species epithets named for
> people to agree in number and gender. So if it was a group the name was 
> derived
> from, an automatic change was requested. However, after 2000, this 
> changed, and
> no names, even if they occured before 2000, were mandated and in fact they 
> were
> stated to be preferred as the print name even if they were later to be
> "emmended." *Bambiraptor feinbergi*, named for the husband and wife 
> Feinbergs,
> was named in 2000, and any correction to the name is in violation of the 
> ICZN
> rules.

I'll have to look up if you aren't confusing something here...

> [...] no one says you HAVE to use the ICZN.

At present, though, the ICZN is the only existing body of rules for the 
scientific names of "animals". Phylogenetic nomenclature for species doesn't 
exist yet.